Packers Claim Fulgham for Second Time

The Green Bay Packers are giving another chance to receiver Travis Fulgham, who spent part of training camp with the team in 2020.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – On Aug. 10, 2020, the Green Bay Packers claimed receiver Travis Fulgham off waivers. On Aug. 17, 2022, they did it again.

Before Wednesday’s joint practice against the Saints, the Packers released receiver Malik Taylor. They filled that roster spot by bringing back Fulgham, who spent nine days with the team in 2020. The move, first reported by ESPN.com’s Field Yates, was confirmed by a source.

With the veteran receivers unlikely to play on Friday night against the Saints and rookie Danny Davis banged up, the Packers are short on receivers. Fulgham not only has a little experience in Green Bay but he spent the start of training camp with the Broncos, who are coached by former Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett.

“Obviously, he knows our system a little bit and then he was in Denver,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said on Thursday. “Going into these last two preseason games, we needed some numbers, so having a guy like him available to us who actually knows a lot of what we're doing was nice.”

That quick decision to release Fulgham the first time, as it turned out, was a bit of a mistake. He landed with Philadelphia and caught 37 passes for 539 yards (14.2 average) and four touchdowns in 13 games. During one four-game stretch, he caught 27 passes for 378 yards and three touchdowns. However, he caught only nine passes during the final eight games of the season.

In 2021, he failed to make the Eagles’ roster and spent most of the season on Miami’s practice squad before playing in one game for Denver in December.

The Broncos released him on Tuesday. And now, it’s back to Green Bay, where he’ll join a position room jam-packed with receivers with something to prove.

At Old Dominion, Fulgham started for most of his final three seasons. He caught 63 passes for 1,083 yards (17.2 average) and nine touchdowns as a senior in 2018. Before the 2019 draft, he measured 6-foot-2 1/2 and ran his 40 in 4.58 seconds.

The Detroit Lions drafted him in the sixth round but he didn’t catch any of his three late-season targets as a rookie.

With his parents working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, Fulgham has lived in four other countries, calling South Africa his favorite. His first Catholic communion was at Mount Nebo in Jordan, where Moses’ death is marked with a monument, and he walked where Jesus walked in Jerusalem. He visited Nelson Mandela’s home in South Africa, the Taj Mahal in India, the Vatican and the Great Wall of China. And he saw life-changing poverty while living in India.

“When we would drive somewhere, they would come up and bang on your window for just a little bit of food,” he told Pilot Online. “There were so many of them. You couldn’t help them all, and you know they really needed it. It was really sad.”

He grew up playing soccer, cricket, rugby, volleyball, baseball, basketball. When he moved to the United States in ninth grade, basketball was his first love. He didn’t start playing football until he was a junior. So late to the sport, he was a walk-on at Old Dominion. That status lasted for about a week.

“I’ll never forget,” then-ODU assistant Michael Zyskowski told NBC Philadelphia. “He was on the scout team and he was just Moss’ing guys and making plays for the scout team, catching balls that were really just jump balls. He was catching balls that he had no business catching literally as a walk-on, true freshman receiver.”

Fulgham will turn 27 two days after the season-opener at the Vikings.

On the Rodgers-receivers meeting this morning, Randall Cobb said: “It’s like a parent. If you hear one thing from your parent but you hear one thing from your friend, you might do what your friend tells you.” https://t.co/OFBySiVUWk

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) August 17, 2022